


and so this is...

by samskeyti



Category: Pride (2014)
Genre: Christmas, Dogs, Margaret Thatcher - Freeform, Multi, Politics, food as metaphor for murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samskeyti/pseuds/samskeyti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the world falls apart, some things stay in place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and so this is...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suth/gifts).



_When the world falls apart, some things stay in place_

1984:  
“It’s open!” Jonathan _projects_ from the kitchen.

Steph clatters and swears her way through the door, scruffy striped gloves and tartan muffler caught up in gifts wrapped in old posters, her hat a thicket of tinsel and Gethin’s only just put the phone down. He swings around, hiding the way his hand’s been at his face and he’s really always awkward, so when he more or less falls into Steph — "Let me _help_ " — and when his face feels hot and luminous, snow-damp against Steph’s cheek, it really is completely normal.

1986:  
Joe’s back again this Christmas. Last year he and Steph and Mark rolled in early and stayed, the five of them huddled on Jonathan and Gethin’s vast bed as their hosts (host, truth be told) played each side of every record Joe and Steph and Mark had sourced from basement record dealers — old American discs from sweet smoky shops in Brixton and Notting Hill and Mile End and Joe doesn't even _know_ , where all of them felt differently conspicuous, though conspicuous was something one could build a career on, Jonathan assured them. Places where Joe squelched shame-faced fears of getting stabbed or mugged, of turning into his mother.

Anyway, 1986 and Joe turns up on time, though a moderately tiny, more than moderately nervous part of him wished to be late. Boxing Day, perhaps or New Year.

He has a date. A boyfriend. A _sweetheart_ as Gwen would say. Pale and skinny and the strangest mixture of shy and talkative. Between them they could keep up one end of a normal conversation. And younger. He’s younger than Joe. Steph had given him a ribbing over legality and irony. He braced for more, among friends.

“He’s from Sheffield,” Steph murmurs while Gethin spirits away their coats.

“Bromley, _never_.” Mark’s skinny, his hands flung up in outrage. Probably burning the candle at both ends, along with various barricades. “You’ll never make it back to London in time for tea.”

“Sheffield via Oxbridge, I hear,” says Mike, with a comradely finger-dig in between Joe’s ribs, eyes aglow with mischief for a moment. David (he’s called David — a Jewish Oxbridge boy at a communist Christmas party, Joe’s definitely going to be making this up to him later —) David’s nervous laugh drags Joe back to the moment, blushing as he realises how far along he’d imagined the _making up_ , the places that make Dave ticklish, the ones that make him squawk and the delicious few that make him fall into rapt, blinded silence.

“Cambridge did a great deal for the Cause, back in the day, darling.” Jonathan appears at the kitchen door, all benevolence and icing-sugared apron. It’s Liberty, Jonathan’s apron. Joe suspects the fact of his knowing this is a greater marker of class treason than his proto-Establishment boyfriend. 

“We shan’t hold it against you, love” says Jonathan, enveloping David’s hand in a powdery paw. 

1987:  
Mike’s shattered, looks fucking awful even now. Months spent on community projects in Lancashire, Glasgow and Leeds, where nobody knew him, or at least no-one knew him well enough to _ask_. Time’s corrosive, clearly. Not balm, but acid rain.

Gethin’s awkward now. Stammering with the unfairness of everything. Barely able to look at the face, paler now, the hair greyer at the temples, or the way Mike no longer has any idea what to do with his hands. He cannot bear to watch this grief that isn’t his.

It’s Steph and Joe Mike turns to, each of them useless and earnest, too. Gethin flees to the kitchen. Jonathan’s hunched before the glowing, open oven, fussing over his bird. A little fuller of figure than a year ago, lush hair in waves on his neck, hands steady, a new prescription in their bathroom cabinet and an audition lined up for next week —. One look at him and Jonathan shuts the oven, slips past Gethin with a light hand on his waist and a kiss dropped on his forehead. 

It’s Jonathan who scoops Mike into a broad, whiskery hug. Jonathan, too, who returns all through the afternoon unbidden yet never hovering, a bite stolen from his plate and a party hat slid over his ears, a look or a trace of a smile. Small, private, missed gestures for Mike alone, and it’s Jonathan who man-handles him to the settee and sits him in the middle, between Joe and Gethin and Steph, squashed, and presses a mug of hot cocoa and rum into his chilly hands, saying, “This, my love, is the opiate of the people.”

Mike grins, wide and weightless, and it’s the loveliest thing Gethin thinks he’s ever seen.

1999:  
Steph brings Sylvia this year, a move that’s given Gethin a week of headaches. That sweet crush of Joe’s one year, he’d been no trouble at all, though he’d skipped the ham, but Sylvia is rumoured to be a trenchant vegetarian. A charming, articulate, beautiful vegetarian, who's had Steph forsake all bacon, so she must be blessed with talents that do not bear thinking about in Gethin’s book, especially not when she’s about to arrive on his door step. He surveys the table, freezing as he considers the candles. Are bees members of the protected Kingdom? Gethin needs to breathe. 

They show up being led by a stout, chatty beagle in a tinsel collar. 

“He’s _adorable_ ,” Gethin exclaims, in chorus with Jonathan and Mike and Joe and Joe’s Dutch human rights lawyer boyfriend (slender, blond and talkative, Joe is as reliable as ever) and Jeff, back from Australia at long, long last and dressed like a jeans model. They look ridiculous, a row of Miss Congenialities teetering on the edge of a glaringly lit club stage. If Gethin’d been the dog he’d have fled.

The dog, however, thrives. Steph says he’s a rescue, sprung from a grim facility by Sylvia’s network of animal activists. No one’s sure what they were testing on him, but he doesn’t seem to have come to harm. He’s unprejudiced in his appetites, an eager conversationalist and loves all of mankind, in addition to lesbians. By the time dinner’s finished, the rug beneath the table licked spotless, Oscar is old, dear friends with them all. 

Named Oscar for the telly, of course. “ _See_ how grouchy he is,” Steph says, hefting him squirming over the table. 

His tail slaps Mike’s face as he grabs him, turning him round only to bump slap into Oscar’s lappy tongue. “Tart.” He drops him into his lap, mock-winded at his size. Oscar sits on his lap through dessert, unperturbed by Jonathan’s theatrical pudding rituals. He hoots through the Queen’s speech with Mike’s fingers waggling his ears and scratching his chin encouragingly. None of them can bear to see him go. 

2000:  
The next year, there’s an extra guest. Smaller and more reserved than Oscar, this one’s also mostly beagle, possibly terrier somewhere. Not quite out of puppyhood, devoted and inseparable from Mike. He stops short of decorating the dog for Christmas, but he bounces it on his knee, talks to it and slips it goose and stuffing when he thinks Jonathan’s not looking. He has named it Arthur. They'll all tease him relentlessly, ever after, but not today. Not now.

2013  
They’ve called the pudding Maggie for ever. Hanging in the pantry for weeks awaiting drawing and quartering, graffiti on the muslin, decked with a conical paper hat one year, a red flag another. One year they printed invitations to the annual Burning of the Witch. This year they don’t need to labour the point. No name needs to be mentioned when Jonathan carries her out on a platter, douses her in brandy and lights the flame.

Years. Fucking years of waste and loss and tears and pointless destruction. Fucking shameful years, but they’re here. Steph and Sylvia and an ex-puppy-farm shih-tzu called Olive, Mike and Arthur, Jeff (who married Murray, his Australian) — Jeff and Murray, Joe and Owen (slender, blond, Northern, garrulous), Reggie and Ray, in from Brighton for the occasion, Gethin and Jonathan. 

Joe starts singing and they join him, all of them bar Murray word-perfect. Solidarity for ever. Gethin's still wavery, so self-conscious when singing, a disgrace to all Wales. Joe’s young boyfriend's fervent, Mike bright with tears and hope. Jonathan basso profundo, ageless, clearest of all.

Jonathan. _He_ gets all lapsed atheist at Christmas, but Gethin’s full up looking at them all, close to overcome with longing that he knew just who to _thank_.

**Author's Note:**

> Quote from "Levi Stubbs' Tears" by Billy Bragg. Title from the ubiquitous Lennon song (ran out of time to research a title from Lenin, but it's the thought that counts). 
> 
> Murray and Olive are randomly named. Anyone else just may be a crossover cameo. Puddings were harmed early and often.


End file.
